A Posse Ad Esse

Halloween was fun. For the first time, I actually went out with the parents and the kids to go trick-or-treating. I'd always chosen to stay at home, and this time I decided to just leave the bowl of candy on the front doorstep with a sign, and I went with John and Jet through the neighborhood.

It was fun. Especially more fun since John was back home from Seattle. We traded off weeks, and I'll write more about the gaming and convention and setup for it in another entry; but the week while John was away made me, as always, really appreciate everything single parents have to go through so much more. Especially when things break down...

One thing that happened was that I completely misplaced my fitbit, which seems a small thing except that I've been living with a pedometer for longer than Jet's been alive, so it's really hard on me and my habits. And when I mean completely, I actually mean that I lost it three times in a row while John was away, and the last time was when I was so dead tired, I couldn't tell if it had fallen out while I was picking Jet up from fencing Thursday night or not.

I got so mad at the fitbit for getting lost again that I just gave up on it and said, "Good riddance" and just went to bed instead of even trying to look for it anymore. The next morning, I actually searched each piece of laundry before putting it into the washer, and did three loads, getting the second one into the dryer and the third into the washer before running off to 911. On the way to 911, I stopped off at the parking lot, in the daylight, and looked around for the thing, but didn't find it. I did, however, feel better about making the effort and caring at all about it. It was a busy day with 16+ reports, and the supervisors were really happy I made it in.

When I got back home, I opened the dryer door and the fitbit was sitting on the lower lip of the doorway as if waiting for me.

I'm not sure what happened. I'm not sure it matters. *laughs*

The other thing that happened was that on the Saturday while John was gone, we hosted Kaiden and his mom Karina for a Minecraft morning, where we showed them a bunch of our worlds and how to get modpacks onto their machine. They, in turn, showed us a castle world they'd built out of blocks of emeralds and glass. It was beautiful and huge, and they were a little sad when we said that they couldn't really apply mod packs to a world that was already built.

In the midst of it all, Jet's machine suddenly stopped booting. We couldn't deal with it right then, and I sent Jet off to fencing at noon, and then finished helping them install the stuff they wanted to install. Then I had to pick Jet up, and we came home to his dead machine. Jet thought a bit about what he would salvage from his machine if he could, and I went to work on the machine itself. We talked a little with John, and he pretty much concurred with me on what to try, though he also had the equipment to do a full harddisk swap to see if that would work. I had no idea where all that was, so I stuck with what I could do, which was to just open up the machine, vacuum it out and get the dust out, wiggle every connection, and see if that could free up the boot device enough for Jet to get his data off.

I went through the effort, and we were rewarded with a booting machine!! Jet wanted to assume it would just work, and I said, "No, it's going to fail again, it's just a matter of when."

So he dutifully backed up all the data he really wanted off the machine.

A neighbor had a Dell Inspiron One all-in-one from two years ago, that they didn't need and their parents had given to them; and John saw, on Facebook, that they were just giving it away. So Jet went over there to practice Mandarin with their kid and got the machine. They also brought over nearly five pounds of quinces from their tree in their backyard! *laughs*

When Jet's machine did completely fail him three days later, he tried it out and had to admit that it was a lot faster and nicer than his old machine. He also was very happy that he backed up all his data, and now has access to it all.

I then worked with the five pounds of quinces, and on the first day turned the fruit into juice and pulp. On the second day I turned them into twelve jars of jelly and a big pan of dulce de membrillo, or quince paste/quince cheese. Though... the membrillo seems to me to be something more like a super jam, because it can be sliced and layered with sharp cheddar on crackers. The tart sweetness of the membrillo is amazingly good, and the jelly's good and hard this year because I added more pectin. The jelly from last year got more and more loose with time, and this batch turned out good and solid to start. So I'm very happy with how that all turned out.

I ended up giving a block of the membrillo and a jar of the jelly to the neighbors that gave us the quinces in the first place. That was fun.

And on Halloween night, I ended up with over 15,000 steps on my returned fitbit. So it all ended up all right...

So very true. We usually do a monthly backup of all the machines anyway, so he wouldn't have lost too much anyway as we do have a backup of his machine, but he'd just made an Ogre map that he was especially proud of and was regretting the loss of until I got the machine to go again.

The daily backup of things you really care about is a good and not that common discipline. I do that with my writing.

The last time we had a trick-or-treater come by was in 1994. That was only because the cruel parents of a family that had just moved into the neighborhood *made* their kids go around to meet everyone. That's one of the drawbacks of country life. The candy return for the effort involved just isn't worth it for hungry kids. We still make pumpkins to put out, but it's mostly for the amusement of the dogs. Pumpkin is one of their favorite foods and so they're always happy to help.

I've been using my phone as a step tracker. That's turned me into one of those people who always has their phone in their pocket. Oops. That's a bit odd out here, since in addition to not having trick-or-treaters we don't have cell coverage. I've been considering something from the Fitbit class of devices as an alternative, but I do worry about losing it. I guess that's not an unreasonable fear, but perhaps it's better than forgetting about the phone and crunching it when I'm hauling around wood or rocks.